The disclosure pertains to a fish handling tool provided with a nipping part to nip a fish caught from the sea or a river and a balance part with which the fish is weighed.
Recently, sports fishing, in which a caught fish is released, has become popular. In this case, when a caught fish is seized by hand and a hook is removed, this not only makes slime on the surface of the fish body adhere to the hand but also injures and debilitates the fish. Thus, it becomes difficult for the fish to survive in extreme environments although the fish is released. Therefore, a fish handling tool that nips the mouth of a fish to handle the fish has been proposed (for example, refer to Japanese Published Unexamined Patent Application No. 2002-45098).
However, this fish handling tool is structured so that a movable tooth takes the opening posture in the natural state where an operating member is urged by a spring and that by operating the operating member against the spring the movable tooth is closed to nip a fish. In order to keep the nipping state, a locking means is required so as to lock in the state where the operating member has moved against the spring. Therefore this fish handling tool has a problem because a fish will be dropped off if the locking means is suddenly released by some impacts.
Then, a structure is proposed that a fish handling tool has a nipping posture, where a fish is nipped by movable teeth in natural state, and an opening state, where both tip ends of the movable teeth open from the nipping state by moving the operating member against a spring. Then, by releasing the operating member, the nipping state is returned and locked while enabling a fish to be weighed (for example, refer to U.S. Pat. No. 5,119,585).